Daniel Pink's Drive

I've just finished reading Daniel H Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

It was a surprisingly good read with a strong basis in positive psychology (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, noted for his work on happiness, creativity, and "flow", is frequently mentioned and quoted).

Pink breaks down the history of human motivation into several operating systems. Motivation 1.0 was based on survival and was very effective in the early days of humans.

Motivation 2.0 was developed during the Industrial Revolution and was based on the idea that people respond rationally to external forces (extrinsic motivators) like rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. The economic development of the past century was fueled by Motivation 2.0.

Motivation 2.1 was an incremental improvement on Motivation 2.0 based on MIT professor Douglas McGregor's research that poeple have hgher drives that could benefit businesses if managers and business leaders respected them. This led to loosening of dress codes, flex-time schedules, and other perks to grant employees greater autonomy.

But Pink suggests we need a total upgrade to Motivation 3.0, based on what he calls Type I behavior.

Type I behavior is fueled more by intrinsic drives than extrinsic ones. It concerns itself less with the external rewards to which an activity leads and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself.

I'll write more about this book over the next week or two, especially about Type I behavior and improving your life (and business).

Daniel Pink's self written cocktail party summary of Drive is:

When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system–which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators–doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

In the meantime, click here to take a survey to determine whether you exhibit Type I behavior.